Representation in gaming

Hey everyone, I know many of you (many, oh so many) have already ploughed through the feilds on the topic of representation in Video games. But since you all left and moved on to talking about other things (like WoW and addiction) I would like to take out my dusty rake and walk where you have once walked, perhaps down a cooler trail...

Yes we have all talked about Lara Croft and Baynetta and melon armour, and screeched that eventhough characters doesn't have to be realistic, why oh why do they have to be so sexualized? But I did read an interesting blog post (from another blog, not ours....) where the author talked about the art of the characters. They have all been made by artists, and many of them, male and female characters, are charicatures (there is no spell check on this so I apologise for my horrible spelling in advance). They are not aiming to make something realistic, rather, they are focusing on stereotypes she said. I really don't see how the picture above fits the stereotype of a womam. Wouldn't the stereotype of a female character mirror the stereotype of a female gamer? or a female fighter? Much like the video's we were shown in the level two tutorial, I figured it would be of a girl dressed up in pretty clothing and being completely unable to fight or defend herself (like how Susan slaps her opponent to defeat in the clip). Yet instead we see pretty much whats depicted in the above picture. So no, they can't be modeled on the stereotype. Maybe they just want to give us something nice to look at, what reality can't always provide...but what about the men.

Why are men so ripped and muscled up? As blogger "bilsybub" put so eliquently, male characters are based on being "badass". And most people don't have a problem with that, heck, even I tend to choose the dude with the huge muscles and the biggest gun sometimes (but for some reason that dude tends to be a tad slow...has anyone else noticed that?) I guess they might, they being the designers, be trying to portray what the ideal man and woman would look like. Or trying to use cheap tricks to attract us to games, which actually work for many people. Yes, we are going to judge the game on how good the content is and how difficult it is, how engaging it is, but we also do judge the book by its cover. I guess its just human nature. And obviously if it wasn't successful they would have to stop doing it by now, if there was enough tension about it, serious money losing being a huge possibility kind of tension,then the big companies would have to change certain things, because at the end of the day they do want to make their money.

"There is a lot of talk about it though" I hear many of you thinking whilst reading this post -via my mind reading powers. There is a concern over it. There are numerous discussions about it online, obviously its a big deal. Still, not big enough. I think its still growing. Many of us just accept it. Yes, my elf likes to show her skin, but personally I hardly noticed that, I was too focused on the game. But once we started talking about it I did stop and think. I think there are many like me, we just accept it in order to play the game, and it doesn't really effect our experience, but once we do notice and really think about it, it does bother us. But I still stand by my point, if many people were making a big deal about it then changes will be made undoubtedly, but since there are people like me, there are people who actually like it, and there are people who really just don't care, companies don't need to worry.This representation can and probably will carry on with games in the future...